Author: Christian Sauvé

  • Life of Pi, Yann Martel

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Vintage Canada, 2002, 368 pages, C$21.00 tpb, ISBN 0-676-97377-9

    (Read in French as L’histoire de Pi, translated by Nicole and Émile Martel)

    As a convinced genre reader, I look at general literature with deep suspicion: In a mirror image of all mainstream readers convinced that there is nothing of interest in genre fiction, I frown at literary fiction and ask if something can be worthwhile if it’s not genre fiction.

    While even a cursory explanation of Life of Pi suggests that it’s not exactly mainstream literature, it has won the 2002 Man Booker prize and, as such, pretty much represented the literary establishment for a solid year. It sold briskly, earned critical accolades and was read by mass audiences. Not bad for a book written in English by a French-Canadian author.

    It is, nominally, a story of survival about a shipwrecked boy stuck on a lifeboat with scant supplies and a full-sized tiger. It’s hailed by the over-narrator (who’s not the boy, at least not always) as a story fit to give you faith in God’s existence. It’s a story of meshing cultures, careful observation and improbable coincidences. A second level of reading is even suggested late in the book.

    But here’s the kicker: You can read it as a fantasy or as a thriller. Yann Martel has fashioned an ingenious cross-genre story with wide appeal for very different groups of readers. The opening note, written as from the author, imperceptibly takes us from reality to fiction, setting up the level of fantasy that soon becomes essential to the book. Nearly a hundred pages of somewhat realistic fiction follow, as protagonist Piscine (“Pool”, in French) describes his early childhood experiences, halfway between his father’s zoo and his town’s religious establishment. Careful details pepper the narrative with an astonishing accessibility, setting up Pi’s character and the offbeat quality of his life. Numerous digressions about zoology and religion add interest to the book.

    Then catastrophe strikes and Pi finds himself shipwrecked on a lifeboat with numerous animal companions —including an adult tiger. By this time in the story, we know (though Pi’s education) that tigers are truly dangerous animals: spending five seconds on a tiny lifeboat with one seems impossible, let alone entire days. But that’s what happens, as the other animals are “removed” and Pi learns how to survive. Early on, it’s mentioned how he’ll spend more than half a year drifting on the ocean. Will Pi manage to keep the tiger away? Will he have enough food to last? What happens once thing start breaking down?

    Through a careful accumulation of credible details, Martel will make you believe in the reality of Pi’s unreal situation. Through a techno-thrillerish density of technical details and a clever number of observations, Pi’s struggles are credibly described. The result is a gripping section that scarcely lets the reader pause for a break.

    As the months at sea slowly pass, the reality of the situation slowly gives way to fantasy. It eventually leads to a lengthy dream-like passage in which the normal rules of reality take a leave of absence. A mysterious island is discovered, a terrible discovery is made and an escape ensues; what it all meant will be left to students struggling with their essays about the book.

    It concludes with a twist, as an alternate explanation is quickly delivered. But as even the characters remark, the tiger is the better story. And so it goes.

    I’m not terribly interested in delving deep in my critic’s brain to find out if I truly liked Life of Pi (hey, it’s been a long month), but even if my appreciation of the book is partially rooted in my surprise at how interesting a Man Booker winner could be, that’s more than good enough. Even if the adventure story is misdirection and metaphor for a far more awful true story, see if I care: I got my entertainment out of the book, and it doesn’t bother me if it’s a superficial way to read an award-winning mainstream book. Life of Pi is written to allow several interpretations, but even my fellow literalists will come away pleased by the story as it is presented on the page. The cover blurb by the San Diego Union Tribune ends up as an eerily appropriate exit line: This story may not make you believe in God, but it may make you believe in literature.

  • Les Rivières pourpres, Jean-Christophe Grangé

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Albin Michel, 1998, 405 pages, C$29.95 tpb, ISBN 2-226-09331-1

    (Available in English as either Blood-Red Rivers or The Crimson Rivers)

    I wish I could tease you by saying that Jean-Christophe Grangé’s Les Rivières Pourpres is one of the best French thrillers I have ever read and that it’s forever out of the Anglo-Saxon literary sphere. Fortunately for you, the book is available in English as either Blood-Red Rivers (the original title) or The Crimson Rivers as the movie tie-in edition.

    Additionally, most English-speaking cinephiles probably remember the 2000 French movie starring Jean Reno and Vincent Cassel as two policemen investigating what turns out to be related cases. But as it so often happens, the novel and the movie don’t necessarily agree.

    For one thing, the characters are very different. In the film, Inspecteur Pierre Niémans, played by Jean Reno, is a grizzled but basically competent policeman, riffing off Reno’s quasi-patented screen personae to good effect. The novel version is a lot darker: in the dynamite opening chapter, Niémans severely beats a homicidal hooligan after a soccer riot, leading to a messy internal investigation that drives him out of Paris and into a tragic character arc that finds resonance in the novel’s conclusion. Things aren’t much better for his partner, as Arab-French policeman “Karim Abdouf” suddenly becomes “Max Kerkerian”, under the handsome Gallic traits of Vincent Cassel. Exit the entire beur back-story of a young troubled youth becoming policeman for fear of becoming a criminal. Exit the dreadlocks. Exit, indeed, most of the character’s distinctiveness, replaced by a cool “I don’t like fascists” one-liner to stoke the film’s memorable skinhead-beating.

    Oh well.

    I suppose you won’t be surprised to find out that the movie ends up on a far more optimistic note, won’t you? The book, after all, doesn’t leave much room for a sequel…

    But never mind that. Finding a translated copy of the book in North America will be challenging enough; too bad you won’t be able to experience the book in its original form: If Les Rivières Pourpres does something exceedingly well, it’s to present a French-language thriller that is initially as gripping as its American equivalents. French authors can do mysteries with the best of them. Thrillers, on the other hand, require a different discipline. French authors have a hard time recreating the urgency, the electric charge of a well-plotted suspense. Les Rivières Pourpres is an exception.

    From the beginning, there is a fluidity to the writing, a hardness to the dialogue that makes Les Rivières Pourpres a pleasure to sink into. Grangé writes well, but he doesn’t leaden his prose with useless words; the story moves along at a brisk clip, and the very particular atmosphere of the book (set deep in France’s rural Alps) has a unique quality that immediately distinguish this thriller from countless others. Grangé isn’t afraid of gore, and a number of scenes are simply dreadful in a delightful fashion.

    Alas, I’m not so fond of the book’s latter half, which pretty much reflected my disenchantment with the movie’s second half: The ominous rumblings of a gigantic conspiracy turn out to be bottom-basement eugenics that never reach the promises of the book’s initial mystery. As with many other thrillers, The Secret so murderously well-protected doesn’t seem all that important after the fabulous set-up. At least the movie had the sense to end on an action sequence; no such luck here in a rushed finale that settles things far too easily.

    Despite Bruce Sterling’s wry admonition that “there’s a quality in a good translation that you can never capture with the original”, I’m not sure that even the best possible translation of Les Rivière Pourpres could recapture the sheer fun of an original French-Language thriller that has nothing to envy from les Américans. (Chances are that the English translation will be read as “just another thriller.”) It’s both a comfortable quality and a mildly refreshing treat; even with the lacklustre conclusion, Les Rivières Pourpres is a darn good read, and that often all that’s necessary. If you can’t get the book, why not have a look at the film?

  • Zathura: A Space Adventure (2005)

    Zathura: A Space Adventure (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, November 2005) Unapologetically directed at kids, Zathura: A Space Adventure will likely bore adults for at least part of the first act. The kids actors are annoyingly good at portraying pre-teen infighting and result is just about as pleasant as being stuck with two real turbulent kids. Fortunately the plot soon blasts into orbit and the rest of the film becomes a lot more interesting. In fact, the film is likely to inspire a heavy bout of nostalgia for anyone who was a kid SF fan: While Zathura is, at best, fantasy with SF gadgets, there’s still a good part of wonder in contemplating, say, a house floating around a gas giant. And that’s not saying anything about meteor strikes, mad robots, stranded astronauts, carnivorous aliens and the other good stuff that unfolds. It’s possible to quibble about the deterministic structure of the plot, the on-the-nose sentimental moments or the weak conclusion, but it’s difficult to do so while entertaining a bit of childlike sense of wonder. Zathura is unlikely to be much more than a blip in the SF canon, but in some ways it exemplifies a lot of what initially attracts fans to the genre.

  • Star Wreck: In The Pirkinning (2005)

    Star Wreck: In The Pirkinning (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Downloaded, November 2005) Non-nerds need not apply for this fan-made Star Trek / Babylon 5 crossover parody. The video is of the muddy digital variety, the acting is amateurish, the script is merely adequate. No matter, though: the film is freely available, has astonishing special effects and frankly deliver all that a fan could ask for, including a slam-bang finale that’s easily better than the latest canon Star Trek movie. A number of series in-jokes and regional gags may diminish the accessibility of the material for even hard-core Trek/Babylon fans (Star Wreck is the sixth instalment in this Finnish parody series), but no matter: Once the first act is over, it gets easier to understand and a whole lot more fun to enjoy. If you’ve got the bandwidth, download it as soon as you can!

  • Unvanquished: A UN-US saga, Boutros Boutros-Ghali

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Random House, 1999, 368 pages, C$28.00 tpb, ISBN 0-812-99204-0

    (Read in French as Mes Années à la maison de verre , translated by Simone Dreyfus)

    2003 was, all things considered, perhaps the worst year on record for relations between the United Nations and the United States. (Of course, some will say it was also the worst year for relations between the US and the rest of the world.) Even the most geopolitically unaware citizen couldn’t miss the headlines: UN withdraws inspectors from Baghdad. Bush ignores UN Security Council. US invades Iraq. The US, secure in its position as the world’s sole remaining superpower, felt justified in ignoring, even belittling the UN whenever it didn’t agree with the wishes of the White House, even as a majority of Americans we in favour of UN approval. But then again, the Bush administration was never too keen on diplomatic relations where it didn’t get to dictate the results.

    UN-bashing is hardly a new thing, though, nor is it an invention of the Bush II administration. Given W’s rotten record on just about everything, it’s hard to remember that the Clinton administration also played a number of dirty tricks on the UN, ignoring and dismissing it whenever it served its purposes. In Unvanquished , former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali recounts his five years spent at the helm of the organization between 1992 and 1996, and how the United States did their best to undermine him and his work. Those tensions would eventually lead to the American veto of a second mandate… and a revealing memoir that pulls few punches.

    Unvanquished thus doubles as a meaty high-level description of the state of the world circa 1992-1996, a turbulent period stuck between the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the War on Terror. For the UN it’s a period characterized by more ambitious peacekeeping missions and a stronger emphasis on international cooperation on development and environmental issues. Boutros-Ghali’s strong influence as a committed internationalist and a defender of the third-world is not a coincidence to these new roles for the UN.

    As a straight geopolitical treatise, there’s little doubt that Unvanquished can be boring, maybe even a bit redundant. It’s as a biography that it shines most brightly. How does one man feel after taking the helm of such an organization? What does he think when he talks to heads of state, when he visits war zones? Boutros-Ghali emerges from his autobiography as a uniquely sympathetic individual, a man at the helm of an organization constantly threatened by the selfish political ambition of people destined for the dustbin of history. US diplomat Madeleine Albright is particularly singled out as a hypocrite; Clinton himself doesn’t shine too brightly from Boutros-Ghali’s perspective. Ironically, then-humbler US diplomat John Bolton (whose 2005 nomination as US ambassador to the UN would create a firestorm of controversy, to say nothing of his scorched-earth tenure) has an amusing cameo with a fairly sympathetic quote. Canadian Prime Ministers also make one-line appearances: Mulroney is criticized; Chrétien is not.

    It adds up to a slightly overlong book, but one that contains a surprising number of small nuggets. It’s a must-read for whoever wants to understand the nature of the UN-US antagonism (including the US’s perennial refusal to pay its financial contribution to the organization), and it’s a surprisingly enjoyable primer on high-level diplomacy. Boutros-Ghali is an effective narrator, and his vision of the UN as a global mediator is a ray of optimism.

    The French-Language edition of Unvanquished is closer to a revised second edition of the text than a simple translation: Fluently francophone, Boutros-Ghali revised the translation and used the opportunity to revise and clarify some material. The result flows well, within the caveats described above, and proves once more why French has long remained the language of high-level diplomacy.

    Reading the book from a perspective five years removed ends up telling us more about the events of the book than a 1999 read would have. As a convinced internationalist (hey, I’m Canadian), Unvanquished does little to disprove the notion that the UN is a relevant body that will only grow stronger. Even latter events tend to support the notion; even the deep wounds left by the madcap rush to invade Iraq have done little to diminish the UN’s reputation outside the United States. Even as I write this, historians are grumbling about Bush being the worst president in a long while, even as the UN seems to be accommodating Bolton’s fiery ambassadorship. In four years, do you want to be who’s going to be left standing? UN-vanquished? Don’t bet on it.

  • Rent (2005)

    Rent (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, November 2005) Movie musicals may engender a lot of sarcastic comments about their fey nature, but a good one will successfully use the tools of cinematographic grammar to create an experience quite unlike anything else in other mediums. This makes adapting a stage musical a tricky proposition at best: a bland director will simply copy the original staging and let the camera roll. Now let’s face it; there are fewer blander directors than Chris Columbus, and his Rent may have a few good moments here and there, but it seldom coheres into a top-notch movie musical. For every “La Vie Boheme” or “Tango Maureen”, the film muddles through syrupy ballads and what looks suspiciously like mid-1980s music videos. Part of the film approach self-parody: Not only was it difficult to see the film without thinking about Team America‘s “Everybody’s got AIDS!” number, but I was never convinced that Maureen’s performance wasn’t meant to be a satire of truly awful performance art. This, and other missteps such as having artists agonize over selling out, make it remarkably easy to be cynical about the Gap-branded lip service paid to vie bohème counterculture. Not that the film is a complete disaster, mind you: Rosario Dawson is scorching hot and the whole experience is superficially pleasant. But it’s nowhere near the height of what we’ve seen movie musicals achieve since Moulin Rouge! singlehandedly revived the genre.

  • Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

    Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, November 2005) Writer/Director Shane Black took a long time in coming back to the big screen after hits such as Lethal Weapon, The Last Boyscout and The Long Kiss Goodnight, but the wait was worth it. With Kiss Kiss Bang Bang he manages to deliver a black comedy filled with snappy dialogue, off-beat characters, unusual situations and cleverly-used detail. That it pays homage to pulp detective fiction and is peppered with Hollywood in-jokes is just icing of the cake. Robert Downey Jr is a compelling protagonist (his sarcastic narration is good for a number of chuckles), Michelle Monaghan has a luminous turn as an almost-failed actress on the edge of bitterness and Val Kilmer exudes a comfortable confidence as a detective with plenty of trick up his… underpants. But the star of the picture is Shane Black; he first made his reputation with fantastic scripts, but his first directorial effort portends a number of even better films in his future. This isn’t a classic for the ages, but it’s a whole lot of fun. Fans of criminal fiction will find much to love in this unassuming low-budget effort… provided they don’t mind a bit of sarcasm and more twists than in a yellow paperback thriller.

  • Jarhead (2005)

    Jarhead (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, November 2005) Most military fiction either glorifies the nobility of war or decries its murderous nature, but there’s a little-known third alternative, that of military service as a long stretch or boredom, loosely interrupted by terror, dashed expectations and boys being boys. More or less faithfully adapted from Anthony Swofford’s blisteringly honest autobiography, Jarhead follows the path of a Marine as he undergoes training and is then shipped off to Saudi Arabia just in time for Desert Storm. Director Sam Mendes gives a decent polish to this modern wartime story, but it’s what doesn’t happen that gives the film its unique edge: the protagonist’s testosterone overload is never quite satiated by the war, even though it is likely to end up being his life’s defining moment. Jake Gyllenhaal turns in a decent performance as “Swoff”, but it’s Jamie Foxx who steals the show as a professional soldier who does actually find satisfaction in being a warrior. (Hoo-Ha.) There’s plenty of political resonance between this and the American occupation of Iraq, but readers of the original volume will be disappointed by how Swofford’s explicit critique is here relegated to a minor character’s ranting. Visually, the film has a number of great moments —including a walk through a burning oil field. What doesn’t work so well is the suggestion that there’s a much better picture lurking under the surface, a movie with more daring and more energy. A movie closer to the book, one is tempted to say. Ultimately, Jarhead veers too closely to its subject matter: boredom.

  • The Ice Harvest (2005)

    The Ice Harvest (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, November 2005) Director Harold Ramis here makes a blatant bid for the “Coen Brothers” type of film, only to fail when it becomes obvious that the script is only a pale copy of the “small city black comedy” sub-genre. Sure, protagonist John Cusack is always sympathetic (though he’s reaching an age where boyishness ceases to be an option), Connie Nielsen plays a suitable femme fatale and Billy Bob Thornton is effortlessly dangerous. But there’s a a lack of urgency in this script, despite the tight time frame, despite the desperate circumstances, despite the potential for interesting characters. Certain scenes rise above the others (isn’t it surprising how a guy talking his way out of a locked trunk is comic gold?) while others just linger in place. At least there’s plenty of skill to admire in the film’s first act, as it plunges us boldly in a situation where characters already have established relationships. To be fair, The Ice Harvest doesn’t attempt to be anything more than a low-octane criminal comedy, and it achieves this goal with a relative ease. The performances are relaxed, the direction is unobtrusive and until the drawn-out ending, the film moves at a comfortable rhythm. Not exceptional, but not too bad either.

  • Emergency Deep, Michael DiMercurio

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Onyx, 2004, 464 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-451-41166-8

    (Read in French as Alerte: Plongée Immédiate, translated by Dominique Chapuis)

    One of the most frustrating aspect of military techno-thrillers is how often authors working in the genre will write series even when it doesn’t make sense. The problem can be tracked back to Tom Clancy, whose Jack Ryan found himself embroiled in a series of high-stakes adventures in one book after another. This makes sense when, say, your series is about events that have no impact on the shape of the world. (Which serves to explain the popularity of detective series) But wars, even when they’re imaginary, have a way of messing up geopolitical reality, and authors should at least take that in account, or abandon their fictional world once it has diverged too far away from reality. Seeing Harold Coyle trash Egypt, Iran, Mexico, Columbia and then try to merge it with real-world development (and then desperately “reset” the series in God’s Children) is almost too sad for words. Inevitably, the author ends up cheating by trying to exploit their reader’s attachment to characters while ignoring the lasting consequences of their actions. Even by the lowered literary standards of military fiction, this isn’t playing fair.

    All of this to say that poor Michael DiMercurio found himself stuck with his “Michael Pacino” series after Terminal Run. By then, the fictional world he’d set up was so divorced from current reality that his series was closer to Science Fiction than to current-day military relevance. This divergent universe had kept him shielded, somewhat, from the uncomfortable realities of post-Russia submarine warfare: In a real world where submarines were tools for superpowers and there remained only one superpower, how to justify submersed thriller without resorting to highly improbable scenarios like Joe Buff’s series, or feeble-minded absurdities like Patrick Robinson’s novels? The Pacino sequence offered ever-imaginary enemies to fight against. Alas, sales were down (even for an author who, at the best of times, didn’t escape the military fiction mid-list) for a series so hermetic than only fans of the previous volumes felt welcome. Hence the perils or continuing a techno-thriller series past its expiration date.

    So DiMercurio resets the clock and starts a new series with Emergency Deep, starring a new protagonist named Peter Voronado. The setting is recognizably closer to our own “War on Terror” universe, with threats coming from an unholy alliance between old-school Russian capabilities and new-style terrorist ideology. As the CIA gets wind of a plot to attack Israel, they inexplicably come up with a plan not to destroy the danger, but to infiltrate a spy in the enemy’s rank.

    This spy is Peter Voronado, champ submarine captain beached ashore by an extraordinary health problem. The first third of Emergency Deep is spent bringing together the elements of the plot, thanks to two lengthy prologues, one of which has no business in this novel in its current form. But DiMercurio is a military fiction writer; efficient writing is not his style, and so the novel takes an awful lot of time revving up to cruise speed. By the time Voronado finally reaches his covert position, a certain lassitude has already settled over the novel, a slight annoyance that only gets worse.

    As with many of his veteran colleagues, DiMercurio writes what he knows, but forgets how many details just aren’t useful to the vast majority of his well-meaning civilian readers. Emergency Deep quickly falls in the familiar trap of too many acronyms and not enough energy. Further problems develop along with a pair of unlikely romances, a few plotting issues and a clear lack of tension. The result is one solidly average military thriller that stretches a bit outside the usual confines of a submarine thriller, but not enough to be particularly memorable.

    One can’t fault DiMercurio for finding a way to ally Cold War equipment with concerns about terrorism, or for spending a lot of time “off the boat”, so to speak, in order to explore new directions. But Emergency Deep doesn’t do much with those elements, and fails at attracting new readers. It’s a good step in the right direction while remaining comfort food for his usual audience. But it’s unlikely to make him new fans, or even revitalize the moribund submarine thriller genre. Emergency Deep is slated to be the start of a new series of books; DiMercurio may want to re-think that plan.

  • Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire (2005)

    Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, November 2005) I’m afraid that the Harry Potter series has achieved escape velocity: every instalments is so competently made as to escape any worthwhile critical commentary, leaving the rest of us reviewers fighting over scraps like “ooh, isn’t Hermione such a cutie?” Slightly more accessible than The Prisoner Of Azkaban, but still feeling as if a number of important relationships were short-changed by the adaptation, Goblet Of Fire hits all of the expected notes and continues J.K. Rowling’s lucky streak in seeing respectful adaptations of her books. Not that the source material is flawless, of course: Harry’s passivity in this instalment is so pervasive that it leads to one asking “just how good a magician is he anyway? Isn’t he just an average wizard with a bunch of handy friends?” But even that gratuitous bit of sarcasm isn’t enough to dim the good movie-going pleasure that this film offers. The darkening of the Potterverse continues as it becomes more apparent than ever that Harry is stuck, pawn-like, in a larger tapestry of dangers not of his own making. Good stuff, especially if it develops into something even deeper in the next episodes. Which I’ll see as soon as it comes out, of course.

  • Derailed (2005)

    Derailed (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, November 2005) Dour and ponderous, manipulative and sometimes incoherent, Derailed is further hampered by bad casting choices and a wholly unnecessary double ending. But don’t let that deter you: as a thriller, Derailed knows that it’s not playing in the big leagues, and this basic honesty does much to reconcile viewers with the picture’s raw exploitation. Nominally yet another vigilante story in which an innocent man’s small transgression gets him caught in ever-bigger lies, Derailed easily turns into yet another revenge picture. Here, Clive Owen is arguably miscast as a passive character who eventually learns how to, er, settle his issues decisively. Jennifer Aniston isn’t much better as a tragic heroine. (Only Vincent Cassel is pretty much perfect as the criminal mastermind, even slipping in a line that only Francophones will appreciate) The story is out to manipulate the viewer, and isn’t above lying, cheap shocks and an all-powerful villain to do so. Never mind the plot holes, of course. It adds up to a cheap thriller that at least doesn’t waste too much time. The third act isn’t so good, but by then the movie has to assume the choices it made. Too bad about the cheap second “Kill the bad guy! Kill him!!!” ending. It’s the kind of thing fit to make you wonder how the entire film would have worked so much better as a silly comedy. Chances are that you may enjoy the film as it runs. But you’ll have a hard time respecting it the next day.

  • Chicken Little (2005)

    Chicken Little (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, November 2005) As tempting it may be to excuse this film’s flaws by restating that it’s a kid’s movie, it’s not much of an excuse when comparing the film to any of Pixar’s offerings. The comparison is even more apt considering that Chicken Little is the first film from Disney’s own CGI unit, whcih was set up partly to replace the Mouse’s dependence upon its Pixar distribution agreement. Alas, if Chicken Little occasionally shows moments of charm and wit, the overall film suffers from a bad structure, blatant emotional manipulation and tonal shifts that cumulatively take their toll. One thing that is irreproachable is the quality of the animation and some of the character design: Suburban Oakey Oaks residents are well-patterned after animals, and the sight-gags can be amusing. Sadly, some of those gags seem thrown in the movie without much attention to their surroundings: Chicken Little is filled with individual moments that don’t make much sense in context, especially given how the film doesn’t aim for absurd humour. This ties into the weak structure of the film, which feels padded and meandering; the baseball game sequence is a perfect example of this wobbly structure, clumsily inserted in the rest of the film almost as an excuse to present baseball gags. The soundtrack seems just as forced, providing even cheaper emotional manipulation than the rest of the oft-maudlin screenplay. Fortunately, it all leads to a more focused third act that’s even funnier with fresh memories of War Of The Worlds. But even this late-start burst of energy can’t hide a film that can’t manage to transcend its kiddie audience, much to the dismay of their parents.

  • Contacting Aliens, David Brin & Kevin Lenagh

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam Spectra, 2002, 191 pages, C$22.95 tpb, ISBN 0-553-37796-5

    Few Science Fiction universe are as entertaining as David Brin’s “Uplift” series. On one level, it’s a standard galactic-civilizations setting, with plenty of alien races, big ideas, neat gadgets and an inspiring niche for humanity. It’s space opera at its finest, without much relevance to the future as it could be, but compulsively delightful for five of the six books in the series. (I still doze off at the memory of Brightness Reef). Brin is a natural storyteller: his mixture of humour, action and against-all-odds bravado is the stuff of classic SF adventures.

    The one bit of background innovation that makes it different from other series is a twist on environmentalist concerns: The galaxy out there, we finally discover once we start poking around the stars, is one big potpourri of related species. An essential part of the series is “Uplift”, the lengthy process by which one species brings another to sentience and full-fledged galactic participation. Every species has been uplifted by another… except, curiously enough, humans. In the series, humans have managed to uplift a number of species (dolphins and chimps, at first) while seemingly being patron-less. You can imagine how well the aliens are taking the news, and which kind of upset this causes in well-mannered galactic society.

    Contacting Aliens is, to steal the sub-title, “an illustrated guide to David Brin’s Uplift Universe”, designed as if it was a manual distributed to future agent of humanity as they travel across the galaxy. Galactic history and institutions are sketched, followed by a lengthy bestiary of alien species. Most of those description are accompanied with amusing ink drawings from Kevin Lenagh. The guide is roughly arranged in galactic “family lines”, which prove more related than at first glance. As befitting its billing as a “field guide”, the descriptions are written as coming from Earth’s intelligence agencies, with plenty of tantalizing details, vague suppositions and unanswered questions that agents may want to pursue.

    Fans of Brin’s universe will be thrilled at the wealth of details contained in Contacting Aliens. The Uplift universe is vast, dangerous and fun: If this book does one thing very well, it’s to keep up in the same amusing vein as the novels, balancing Brin’s optimistic humour with a thrilling setting that could still launch a series of adventures. (In fact, the book contains two mini-pieces of fiction that raise even more questions about the nature of the Uplift universe.)

    While the cover sports a spiffy colour illustration by Jim Burns, the guide itself is illustrated by Kevin Lenagh’s simpler black-and-white ink drawings. While Lenagh does an excellent job at portraying Brin’s wilder inventions, the artwork can often err on the rushed and silly end of things. Some of the human figures are unconvincing and the poses often feel unnatural. But I’m being too harsh, perhaps in comparison with Burns’ work: The guide would be much poorer without Lenagh’s artwork, and the sense of fun from Brin’s writing comes across clearly in the illustrations.

    If you’re not already a fan of Brin’s series, Contacting Aliens won’t be as interesting as it should be. Gamers used to reading role-playing source-books will find much familiar ground here (indeed, the book ends on a mention of the Uplift GURPS supplement), but the audience is definitely those readers looking for a little bit more Uplift material after the conclusion of 1998’s Heaven’s Reach. It shows the way to more stories in the Uplift universe and it’s certainly a treat for fans.

    [January 2006: Via email, Kevin Lenagh adds that he contributed a substantial amount of text in addition to the illustration. He also clarifies that the book suffered from a number of unfortunate production issues, making the end result somewhat less impressive that he had hoped for. Have a look at lenaghalienfactory.com for better examples of his art, including color versions of some illustrations in Contacting Aliens.]

  • Buffalo Soldiers, Robert O’Connor

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Vintage, 1992, 324 pages, C$21.00 tpb, ISBN 0-679-74203-4

    Comparing film adaptations to their source novels is a source of quasi-endless fascination, especially if you make the trip from the derived to the original work. The movie leaves you with images, structure and a smattering of good moments. Reading the book deepens the experience, and sometimes even takes you in a different story. Interestingly enough, more obscure source material (as in “I didn’t know this was adapted from a novel!”) usually reveal more interesting differences than celebrated media blockbusters of the Harry-Potter kind: It’s easy for a studio executive to mess around with lesser-known material without a fan base, but Warner Brother studios would be burned down to the ground by the kids if they even tried to mess around with the original. (“We can’t do that, sir! The kids will kill us! Won’t you think of the children? THE HORRIBLE CHILDREN?!”)

    Approaching novels after seeing the film isn’t just a mere exercise in frivolity and facilitated reading: Storytellers should learn how a story gets adapted from one work to another, which details need to be dropped, which changes are necessary to get the audience’s sympathy and so on. Even so-called “hard-edged” movies like FIGHT CLUB are nowhere near as nasty as their literary progenitors.

    And so it goes with BUFFALO SOLDIERS, a little-seen film with an interesting history. Billed as a satire about America’s Army at the close of the Cold War, BUFFALO SOLDIERS deals with an amoral anti-hero who manages to turn his stint in German barracks into a profit-making venture on the back of Uncle Sam’s supply lines. Drug-dealing, senseless deaths, inter-service conflict and racial tensions all play a large part in a film that brings to mind many other dark military comedies. Alas, this movie was premiered at the Toronto Film Festival on September 10th, 2001. The perceived profitability of cynical portraits of soldiers fell to the ground the very next day, sending the film back on the studio shelves, and then (much later) to a limited theatrical reserve and an even softer video release.

    Too bad, because if the film loses steam in its second half, it’s a serviceable little black comedy with an appealing anti-hero and some neat direction in its first half. It’s dark, but not unbearably so. It doesn’t portray the army favourably, but neither is it an all-out attack on the institution.

    The novel is something else.

    For one thing, protagonist Ray Elwood isn’t simply the clever petty-thief fixer of the film’s Joaquin Phoenix. In the novel, we’re quick to understand that this miserable heroin junkie is skating on a thin ice of brutal enforcement, cheap thrills, overwhelming greed and careful power-playing. Movie Elwood is a decent, if somewhat amoral chap. Novel Elwood is holding together solely because of fear and smack: Nearly everyone he knows would knife him in the back if they could.

    The rest of the novel runs in pretty much the same vein. The events are more similar to the novel that you’d expect (Elwood sees his position threatened by a new authoritarian Master Sergeant, so he seduces his rival’s daughter and sets up an epic drug deal as his last hurrah in the underground business. Then things go wrong.), but the tone is a lot darker. Some changes are significant, yet meaningless (Ray’s new girlfriend is an amputee in the novel, but the film’s Anna Paquin didn’t need the handicap one bit to fit the character), while others are small but important (the novel is set in, at the latest, the early eighties while the movie takes place in 1989. This is significant given how, historically, the US military had unbelievable morale problems in the seventies, gradually clawing its way back up to a far better all-volunteer fighting force. The harsh environment described in either version of Buffalo Soldiers makes sense close to the seventies, but increasingly less so after then.) And then there’s the ending, which was drastically altered from the novel to the film… and I’ll let you guess which one is happier.

    And yet, even as a written-word purist, I can’t really fault screenwriter Eric Weiss for softening up the story for the big screen. It’s not a revelation if I say that different mediums have different tolerances for excess: I can think of many scenes that work on the page and would be insupportable if captured on cinema. Junkie-Elwood is a fine novel narrator (except that he speaks in “you”), but he wouldn’t earn more than five minute’s sympathy on screen. The rough stuff that follows is interesting on the page, but would be stomach-churning if seen. The film is fine, and so is the novel: fast-paced, decently-written, sharply-detailed and cynical enough to make anyone think twice about enlisting. See the film, then read the book!